Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

Barbara H. Milech and Ann Schilo

Curtin University of Technology

'Exit Jesus': Relating the Exegesis and Creative/

Production
Components of a Research Thesis

Abstract

In the early 90s a visiting scholar at Curtin University

applied through the School of Communication and Cultural
Studies to enroll as a doctoral student whose project would
be a novel plus exegesis. That application was denied, as
University regulations for research degrees couldn't
accommodate alternate forms of theses. This "failure,"
however, motivated a double success. First, the University
established two Humanities research degrees that
accommodated alternate forms of research theses - a Master
of Creative Arts (1997) and a Doctor of Creative Arts
(1998). Second, the University later revised its regulations in
ways that enabled a wide range of exegesis-plus-production
forms of theses across the University.

Key to the success of such programs is an understanding of

the relationship of the exegesis and creative/production
components of a thesis. It is a relationship far from obvious -
witness the Master of Creative Arts student who, learning
that she had to do an exit jesus, feared she would be
crucified. Drawing on the history of establishing alternate
forms of research theses at Curtin University, and on lessons
provided by successful MCA and DCA theses (creative
writing, visual arts, journalism, etc.), this paper explores the

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (1 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

relationship of the exegesis and creative/production

components of a research thesis. It argues that the two best
can be seen as complementary articulations (outcomes) of a
single research question (and related set of research
objectives). It also canvasses the importance and difficulties
of students understanding this relationship, as well as some
best-practice models for assisting them.

Introduction

The relationship between the modes of communication needs

to be seen as an affinity [. . . ]. Art and writing are two
different ways of reaching for truth.

Nikos Paperstergiadis, "'Everything that Surrounds,'" 81.

It is important for research educators in Australia (and beyond) to share

ideas about the shape and purpose of the written component of a research
thesis based in the creative or media arts - what in Australia in the past
decade has been come to be called "the exegesis." The novelty of that
coinage, and our need to have a more firmly shared understanding of what it
means, is suggested by the research student in the School of Art at Curtin
University who asked, "but what do you mean - "Exit Jesus?" Our paper
sketches the answer we give to our students. It gives a brief account of the
establishment of creative - and production - based research education at
Curtin University of Technology; surveys what appear to be the dominant
models for the exegesis at Australian universities; and describes the model
that we have developed across more than a decade of supervising research
students, indicating some of it strengths by giving examples of research-
student successes. In our conclusion, we signal that there remain critical
issues requiring further conversation - still other models to think through,
test and evaluate; still other questions regarding infrastructure for research-
education in the creative and media arts (guidelines for translating typical
university protocols, guidelines for examiners, and the like). We imagine an
ongoing sharing of perspectives and ideas through discussions at research
education symposia and in area journals.

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (2 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

A Local History - Establishing the MCA/DCA at Curtin University of

Technology

Curtin University established a Master of Creative Arts (MCA) in 1996 and

a Doctor of Creative Arts (DCA) in 1998. Like many significant
innovations, this one began with a failure. In late 1990 (October) an
international student enrolled in the doctoral program through the School of
Communication and Cultural Studies in the Division of Humanities with the
intention of writing a thesis in the form of a novel. University structures and
processes did not easily accommodate his proposal: he was required to
modify his intention and plan a thesis in the form of a creative and a
theoretical piece; but even then the University hesitated at the point of
accepting his candidacy proposal (November 1991), and the student
withdrew his application in frustration.

Still, a start had been made. Several Humanities staff were concerned at the
lack of "natural" pathways to postgraduate research from some of its
strongest undergraduate majors - in art, in creative writing, in journalism, in
theatre arts, in museology, in film and television, in design, and the like.
Thus, from 1992 onwards, staff in the School of Communication and
Cultural Studies and the School of Art met, developed proposals, and
worked through the defiles of university committee system to establish a
new type of Higher Degree by Research (HDR) program for those areas - a
Master of Creative Arts.(1) The new program was given University approval
late in 1995 (December) and was effectively underway in the School of Art
and the School of Communication and Cultural Studies from 1996 onwards.
Looking back, it seems odd that it took five years to establish the MCA at
Curtin - a measure, perhaps, not so much of the working party's insight and
commitment as of the proposal's novelty within the culture of Australian
universities at the time. Certainly, when we looked for models for what we
proposed, we found few developed ones in universities in Australia. (2)

Yet one success led to others. By the beginning of 1999 Curtin University
approved the extension of the MCA program to two other Schools in
Humanities at Curtin - Design and the Research Institute for Cultural
Heritage. Still more, it approved the introduction by each of the four relevant
Schools of a creative - and/or production-based doctoral research program -
the Doctor of Creative Arts (DCA). Though not as conflicted as the

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (3 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

establishment of a creative/production-based research degree at Master's

level, the progress to the DCA also met difficulties. In mid-year 1998 the
University's Courses Committee approved the DCA, but then revoked its
approval when it was discovered that the proposed form of thesis did not
conform to then current University regulations for doctoral degrees. In 1998,
however, there was a new climate of support at Curtin for research education
related to creative production, and by the close of year Curtin University
regulations for both doctoral and Master (research) degrees were revised and
approved by Curtin Council, enabling not only the extensions to the MCA
program but also the introduction in 1999 of the DCA program in four
Schools in the Division of Humanities.(3)

The history we sketch here is a local history - the story of one struggle to
introduce research degrees in the fields of creative and media arts in one
Australian university in the last decade of the twentieth century. But we
think the story has general import. Curtin is a "new" university in Australia -
established as an Institute of Technology in the late 1960s and re-established
as a University of Technology in 1987. As such, it illustrates one important
path of migration into the university sector of programs formerly more often
located in Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs), Arts Colleges and
Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions. As a "new university,"
Curtin was both open to innovation yet cautious as it emplaced research-
education structures and processes from the late 1980 onwards. (4) In any
case, the roadblocks we in Humanities at Curtin University encountered as
we developed research education programs for creative and media arts - the
delays and frustrations that reasoned proposals met - had the good outcome
of encouraging us to think carefully about what we meant when we spoke of
a research thesis comprised of a creative or production piece accompanied
by a written exegesis.

The Exegesis - Three Models

Introduction
When in 1998 Curtin University revised its Regulations for Higher Degree
by Research to accommodate the MCA and DCA, it provided for "a creative
or literary work or series of works accompanied by an exegesis." And it
described the "exegesis" for a MCA and DCA in quantitative terms - the
exegesis of a MCA "shall not exceed 20,000 words excluding appendices,
tables and illustrative matter and should normally be within the range 7,500-

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (4 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

15,000 words excluding appendices, tables and illustrative matter;" the

exegesis of a DCA "forming part of a thesis and accompanying a creative or
literary work or series of works shall not exceed 40,000 words excluding
appendices, tables and illustrative matter." Then and now, a traditional
Master's thesis is prescribed as not more than 60,000 words, and a doctoral
thesis as not more than 100,000 words (with all the usual exclusions
pertaining) - thus the exegesis was defined as something not more than half
of a traditional thesis.

These were supportive Regulations - they recognised creative and

production-based research education, and they set limits on the extent of the
written component of a thesis in those areas. But these Regulations were,
and are, Solomonic: they divide the "baby" in half, but do not indicate how
the baby might live as a whole. Thus, imagining how a creative - or
production-based thesis might be a "living whole" has been the focus of
continued work within Curtin Humanities. We have discussed the issue in
Divisional Graduate Studies Committee meetings when deciding on
candidacy proposals, in Divisional Research Skills Workshops when
advising students, and in subcommittees when developing supporting
documents for examiners and supervisors. These conversations, based on
our collective experience as supervisors and examiners, and have led to our
adopting what we call here the "Research Question Model" for creative and
production-based research theses. In coming to adopt that model we have
carefully explored alternate models, in particular those we nominate in this
paper as the "Commentary Model" and the "Context Model."

Like all models, these three are abstractions. They attempt to identify nodes
of critical difference among a range of complex and often contradictory
practices across Australian universities today. In articulating these models
we are indebted to the examples provided by Allan Mann and Julie Fletcher
in their paper for the 2003 Hawaii International Conference on the Arts and
Humanities, "Illuminating the Exegesis," especially to their posing of a
number of key issues or questions that inform debates about the nature of the
exegesis. Our sense is that the three models we identify emerge on the basis
of how clearly a particular practice at a particular university addresses three
critical questions, either implicitly or (better) explicitly:

Can practice-based work in the creative and media arts be research?

Is all practice-based work in the creative and media arts research in the sense

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (5 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

meant when we speak of research in a university context?

If all or some creative/production practice can be research, how best can we

deliver creative and media-arts research education?

Our position is that creative work and production pieces most often entail
research, but that not all such work instantiates research in the sense meant
when we speak of research in a university context. This position is related to
a concern that we, as research educators, do not confuse the politics of
arguing that governmental funding formulas should recognise creative work
and production pieces as "publications" with our responsibilities for
developing higher degree research programs in the fields of creative and
production arts.

The Context Model

A common approach in contemporary Australian universities to
understanding the nature and shape of the exegesis defines it as a discussion
of the context for the creative work. In this format the student submits a
written document that rehearses the historical, social and/or disciplinary
context(s) within which the student developed the creative or production
component of her or his thesis. Examples of this model in university
documents provided by Mann and Fletcher are illuminating. At one
university the creative- or production-based thesis is described as "'an
amalgam of studio-based research and the theorising of that research'" and
the exegesis as a written document that presents "'relevant contemporary
critical debates and practices which inform and position' the studio work"; at
another, the thesis is comprised of an exhibition and a "'research paper' [that]
'supports and complements' the exhibition"; and - a last example - still
another university indicates that the written thesis accompanying the
exhibition "'will be on art theory, history or practice'" (Mann and Fletcher,
para. 25-26; emphases added).

What is interesting in these descriptions of an exegesis is the elasticity of the

language that describes the relationship between the two parts of a creative
or production-based research thesis - "amalgamate, inform, position,
support, complement." Such language has advantages. It enables practices
that respond to the needs of both students and supervisors in the creative and
media arts and to the requirements of universities for research degrees,
conditioned as they are not only by academic understandings of the nature of

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (6 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

research but also by governmental regulations for funding to universities.

That is, such language accepts that a creative work or a production piece can
be research, and it accommodates normative university definitions of
research as work that deals with theoretical, historical and disciplinary
matters in a fashion that contributes to knowledge in the discipline, and
possibly adds to social capital. Even better, it encourages research students
to think about connections between practice and institutional, social or
disciplinary contexts. Indeed, the Context Model is effective precisely
because of the elasticity of its language - and its position as probably the
dominant model across Australian universities may be owing precisely to its
ambiguity.

Still, the disadvantages of this model are considerable. For words like
"amalgam" and phrases like "supports and complements" fudge the second
critical question - "Is all practice-based work in the creative and media arts
'research' in the sense meant when we speak of research in a university
context?" Put differently, the Context Model does not address clearly or
usefully for the research student the question of the nature of the relationship
between the exegesis and the creative work or production piece. And so this
model cannot adequately address the third question - "How best can we
deliver creative and media-arts research education?" For it leaves unresolved
the questions of why there are two parts to a creative- or production-based
thesis; it leaves research students to imagine that the two parts are the
product of two different institutional demands rather than two parts that
form a whole. A research student trying to understand the nature, function
and value of an exegesis in terms of the descriptions provided by the
Context Model well might ask, "What does it mean, Exit Jesus?" Or, as
another, more canny and ironical creative-writing research student at Curtin
once put it, "No worries, I'll write that Extra Jesus."

The Commentary Model

A second node of understanding of the exegesis in Australian universities
today might be called the Commentary Model. In this model the exegesis is
conceived as an explication of, or comment on, the creative production.
There are "weak" and "strong" instantiations of this model. On the one hand,
in the "weak" version of this model, the exegesis is seen (as one university
protocol puts it in regard to an Honours Master of Arts) as a "'brief
explanatory annotation'" of the creative work or production piece (qtd. in
Mann & Fletcher, para. 24). On the other hand, in the "strong" version of the

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (7 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

Commentary Model, the exegesis is conceived of as a "research report" that

describes the research process - that "'elaborates, elucidates and
contextualises the […] creative work'"; that "'present[s] the research
framework: the key questions, the theories, the disciplinary and wider
contexts, of the project'"; that "'tells the story of the research: its aims, its
methods, its achievements'" (Mann and Fletcher, para. 28, 30, 32; emphasis
in quoted university documents is original).

At first glance, there would seem to be little in common between these two
versions of the Commentary Model, between a "brief explanatory
annotation" and an extended "research report." The "weak" version of the
Commentary Model presents the exegesis as little more than an occasional
gloss, whose connection to the thesis has no necessary relation other than
that imagined by the artist or producer, and does not necessarily position it
as a research thesis. The "strong" version, however, requires the artist or
producer to demonstrate the "research nature" of the creative work or the
production piece by providing a "report" that places the work in its
disciplinary, intellectual and social contexts, and which conforms to the
conventions of the traditional thesis, themselves derived from the genre of
reportage established in the sciences across the late-eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.

Yet, both instances of the Commentary Model - the "annotation" and the
"research report" versions - share certain qualities. Both present the exegesis
as secondary to the creative work or production piece, as "the means by
which the investigation [entailed in the creative or production process] is
explained or described" (Mann and Fletcher, para. 30). In this respect, both
adopt an approach that is closest to the meaning of the word "exegesis" - in
common usage, a "critical explanation or interpretation;" etymologically,
from Greek words meaning "to lead out," "to show the way." Thus, each
implicitly answers, "Yes" to the key question, "Can practice-based work in
the creative and media arts be research?" Moreover, each implicitly answers
"Yes" to the related question, "Is all practice-based work in the creative and
media arts research in the sense meant when we speak of research in a
university context?" It is just that the "stronger" version of this model offers
a more cogent means of demonstrating that view in the context of the
protocols for research theses in contemporary Australian practice.

Clearly, the Commentary Model has the advantage of establishing the

relationship between the exegesis and the creative or production component

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (8 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

of a research thesis - the exegesis is a commentary on the creative work or

production piece. Still, we have reservations about this approach in both its
weak and strong versions. A passing reservation, related to the weak form of
this approach, is that it leads to the woeful practice of encouraging research
students to write exegeses whose burden is "my work is like/unlike that of
all other artists in my field because …" - research students should not be
positioned to be their own critics, reviewers, or commentators. Our central
reservation, however, is that the Commentary Model, in both its weak and
strong versions, like the Context Model, preserves the theory-practice
divide. Certainly, there is an advance - the binaries of theory and practice, or
of library and studio work, are reversed, so that creative and production
practices are the primary terms and academic writing is the supplement.
Still, the binary remains in place. As a result, neither the creative work, nor
the production piece, nor the exhibition stands independently as research.
And so we again arrive at that moment when it becomes difficult to justify to
research students the function of the exegesis as anything more than
compliance with the requirements of contemporary academic structures.

The Research-Question Model

It is precisely because we have arrived at this moment again and again - the
"Exit Jesus," the "Extra Jesus" moment - that we have developed the
Research Question Model. This model introduces a third term by way of
understanding the relationship between the binary "exegesis" and "creative/
production piece." This third term is "the research question."

In this model both the exegetical and the creative component of the research
thesis hinges on a research question posed, refined and reposed by the
student across the several stages of a research program. Both the written and
the creative component of the thesis are conceptualised as independent
answers to the same research question - independent because each
component of the thesis is conducted though the "language" of a particular
discourse, related because each "answers" a single research question. Thus
the two components of the research thesis are neither ambiguously related,
nor does one undermine the language - the autonomy - of the other. The
creative or production piece does not form an illustration of the written
document; the exegesis does not form a commentary on the creative work or
production piece. In this way the two components of the creative or
production-based thesis are substantively integrated, form a whole.

Like the approaches of the other two models discussed here, the Research-

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (9 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

Question Model undertakes to honour two masters - the disciplinary forms

and languages of fields of study relatively new to Australian universities,
and the understanding of research embodied in the genre of the traditional
written thesis. Its answer to the question "Can creative or production pieces
be research?" is a resounding "Yes." Its answer to the question "Is such
creative production always research?" is "It depends." This model
acknowledges that research is always entailed in creative production, just as
it is in good teaching. But it argues that not all creative or production
practice instantiates research of the kind entailed in an HDR program. To be
research, a creative work or production piece must meet an "entry" condition
- it must be practice conceived and reflected upon in the interests of
answering a carefully and clearly defined research question framed on the
basis of a sound working knowledge of a particular field, and in the interests
of contributing new understandings to it.

There are, we think, critical advantages to this model. First, at a theoretical

level, this model resists the theory/practice, artist/scholar, studio/library
divide. It asserts that, in defined circumstances, creative production is
research - and it defines those conditions: there must be a research question
related to debates in the field, one that the artist/practitioner arrives at on the
basis of an understanding of both the practice and the writing related to
those debates. Moreover, also at the theoretical level, this model respects the
authority, autonomy, languages and conventions of the disciplines that
produce creative works and production pieces. It asks that such works be
"read" (by examiners) on those terms, and not as something which needs an
explanatory gloss.

Most potently, however, the Research Question Model helps research

students to understand why the "Extra Jesus." It explains to them what
research is generically. It enables them to define their topic - their passion -
as a research question that, in turn, enables them to investigate how that
topic/question has been variously addressed by artists, producers and
theorists. It asks them to shape their own work (creative and expository) in
terms of understandings gained through such investigation. It encourages
them to understand that expository research pieces can be a "creative." It
enables them to talk with authority to different audiences. In short, the great
potential of this model is that it "frees" research students. It frees them from
the key ambiguities of the Context Model (how does the exegesis relate to
the creative work or production piece) and the limitations of the
Commentary Model (my exegesis is an explanation of my creative work or

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (10 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

production piece). It frees them to research a single question in two

languages.

Three Models of the Exegesis - Reflections

After years of trialing different models of research education in the creative

and media arts, we have come to believe that both the Context and the
Commentary Models of the exegesis, as we define them here, entail an
unwanted separation of the creative production and the written document.
Such division between writing and studio practice (we use this term in its
broadest sense to include the creative writer at her desk, or the radio
journalist at a console) reinforces a range of unwanted misconceptions:
artists are only good with their hands; they work by intuition rather than
reason; they do not have the ability to think critically or write intelligently;
and academic writing itself is not creative. Such misprisions - even when
unintentionally embodied in prevailing models - sustain unwanted attitudes
in some of our best research students: a reticence about writing, a lack of
confidence as wordsmiths, a misunderstanding of the nature of research and
an hostility toward it ("OK, I'll do that Extra Jesus"), an undercutting of the
desire to have prowess as an artist/maker legitimated within academe, and so
on. In the approaches framed by the Context and Commentary Models, a
student embarks on a creative production, but the written document looms as
a secondary aspect, an onerous task that must be undertaken in order to fit
the requirements of the degree. This division between practice and writing-
based research obfuscates the dynamics of research itself - the quest for
knowledge through creative problem solving. We have come to use the
Research-Question Model as a way to enable and facilitate this latter
dynamic approach to research.

At one level of education (the Honours research level), a research question

may simply enable the student/practitioner to ask the question that enables
her or him to better understand the field, and to produce a work that
exemplifies practice in that field. At another level (the research Master of
Arts), that question may enable the research student to identify a question of
significance in the field and amplify the debates and practices related to that
question in an effective fashion. And at still another level (the doctoral level)
that question may be posed in a fashion that not only takes account of
presiding debates and practices but also opens the way for contributing new
understandings. Thus, at all levels of research education, the Research

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (11 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

Question Model attempts to answer the question "What does research

education in creative or production fields consist of?" And it attempts to do
so in ways that explicitly integrate creative and production-based theses with
traditional notions of research.

This third approach - the concept of the creative or production-based thesis

as a bi-modal entity whose allied parts arise out of a single research question
- mediates the "split" between theory and practice that tugs at research in the
creative and media arts. In this approach creativity is seen to be a dimension
of all aspects of the research journey from inception to completion. And
research is seen as formed and informed by a nexus between doing, making,
writing, and reflecting. Put differently, in the words of Nikos Paperstergiadis:

The totality of art's meaning is [. . .] located within a social

context, but the [. . .] meaning in writing can never be the
same as the meaning in art. […] The relationship between
the modes of communication needs to be seen as an affinity
rather than [. . .] the text "illuminat[ing]" the image or vice
versa. Art and writing are two different ways of reaching for
truth. (81, emphasis added)

In this "reaching for truth," this motive that our research students bring to us,
the initiating question is fundamental. It generates the objectives and
methods of the research, and focuses what background information needs to
be surveyed.

We do not deny that this format is perhaps the most difficult for students to
negotiate. Thus we put in place various strategies to assist students to
become highly competent independent researchers in their chosen field.
These strategies start within the undergraduate years where our programs are
underscored by the language of research and learning experiences that define
research as investigation. Within the Honours programs, the emphasis is on
understanding the productive effects of a strong research question, and on
encouraging students to explore research methodologies related to both
studio and library. We encourage them to think, not of theory and practice,
but rather of theory in practice and practice in theory.

At the postgraduate level we require the students to develop a greater level

of sophistication in their research. The MCA/DCA is a period of sustained
critical enquiry regarding a particular research question. We provide a range

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (12 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

of activities to assist students in their research. Since 1999 we have run a

Humanities Postgraduate/Supervisor Research Skills Workshop Series and a
Humanities Staff/Postgraduate Seminar Series. The Workshop Series brings
together students and supervisors from different disciplines into
interdisciplinary working groups, with information tailored to the various
stages of the research journey from candidacy to examination. At all points
of the workshop series (from the Writing the Candidacy Proposal Module,
through the Methods in the Humanities Module, to the Endgames Module),
the needs of MCA/DCA research students are given special attention.
Measured by numbers attending and by the response sheets for each session,
research students working in the creative and media arts find the workshops
supportive, and we find that they teach the generic skills needed for their
becoming artists/researchers. Similarly, our Staff/Postgraduate Research
Seminar Series includes events related to creative and production-based
research, bringing together students, staff and visiting academics in
interdisciplinary conversations to the benefit of those working in a range of
modalities.

Finally, we provide support for our students' negotiating the Research

Question Model through our annual Curtin Humanities Graduate Research
Conference. Inaugurated in 1997, the Conference brings together Curtin,
state and interstate research students from a diverse range of disciplines and
provides them with the opportunity to presenting their research in a
professional yet supportive setting. The Conference includes poster/
exhibition sessions that enable MCA/DCA research students (and their
Honours student counterparts) the opportunity of presenting research in
alternative formats more suited to their disciplinary fields. The graphics for
various Conference materials (posters, programs, and the like) "publish" the
work of creative and media-arts research students. That work appears as part
of the cover of the commercially published collection of refereed papers
following each Conference, which itself includes "photo-essays" of
exhibition and poster presentations. In all these ways, we seek to articulate
the importance of creative and media-arts based research programs in the
Humanities, and to valorise the contribution of such research to our research
community.

Conclusion

Since the inception of the MCA/DCA in the mid-1990s both students and

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (13 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

supervisors at Curtin University have developed a fuller understanding of

the Research Question Model - of the relationship between the creative
production and exegesis. And we have had good results. From the visual
arts, one example is the student whose research question centred upon the
butch/femme binary within lesbian identity politics and her quest for
negotiating an alternative position. In her final submission, that question
underpinned both the body of creative work and the exegesis, and she
communicated these concerns in ways that reflected the affinity between the
two forms. And - to take just one more example from the written arts - there
is the creative writing student who began as a Graduate Diploma student
who just wanted to be a creative writer telling the stories of Alzheimer
patients she encountered as a nursing aide, and ended with publishing a
revised version of her doctoral thesis with a commercial press - We'll Be
Married in Fremantle. In between there was a very special research journey
- a successful progress through a Graduate Diploma, an Honours degree, and
a Master of Arts converted to a doctoral degree. That journey was made
possible by the student's learning to ask in different ways at different level/
stages of her research journey - "What is my research question?"

In our paper we canvas the various models that frame the relationship
between the creative production and exegesis components of research theses
in Australia today. These models reflect not so much the specifics of actual
practice at any one university - for practice is always more muddled than
any descriptive model would have it. Rather they define different emphases
in the protocols (and, presumably, practice) in Australian universities -
different presiding assumptions and different consequent pedagogies. In a
longer, fuller paper, we would want to explore in more detail at least one
other important (emerging) model - the one that argues that creative/
production practice as research (see, for example, the Practice as Research in
Performance project at Bristol in the United Kingdom, or, closer to home,
the work of Dr Robyn Stewart). In the meantime, our hope is that by
identifying prevailing models we will contribute to the conversation among
research educators who hope to illuminate the exegesis.

Our argument is that the Research Question Model allows students in the
creative and media arts who undertake research programs to conceptualise
the affinity between the creative/production and the written components of a
research thesis in strong and productive ways - ways that address the theory/
practice divide, that diminish the sense that the exegesis as just an
"academic" exercise/requirement, that enable students to fully articulate and

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (14 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

explore their projects. We rehearse the kinds of support programs available

through Humanities at Curtin in order to suggest that, whatever model
operates, the "novelty" of creative and production-based research theses -
the way in which prevailing regulations for HDR study do not "naturally"
translate to the experience of research students in the creative and media arts
- requires an array of support mechanisms for both students and supervisors
in those areas. Most of all, we know from our daily experience that the
Research Question Model enables research students, whatever their initial
understandings or confidence, to work toward a coherent bimodal thesis - to
thrive. We know that, almost no worries, they can write that "Extra Jesus."

Notes

1. Brian Dibble, Professor of Comparative Literature at Curtin University, led the initiative
to develop research programs in creative arts and media production at Curtin University
across nearly decade (1990-98). Return to paper.

2. A survey in 1994 of all Australian universities by the Curtin Humanities Working Party
for establishing a research Master of Creative Arts (with a view to the Doctor of Creative
Arts) indicates that the following universities newly offered, of were in the process of
establishing, Higher Degree by Research programs that permitted a thesis comprised of a
combination of a creative/production and a written component: Murdoch University; Edith
Cowan University; University of Wollongong; University of Technology Sydney;
University of Western Sydney; James Cook University; Griffith University; Queensland
University of Technology.

The responses to the survey were not complete. Of those who did respond, it was not always
clear as to whether or not the MA degrees offered (at that time) were coursework or
research degrees (eg., Griffith and the University of Western Sydney [Nepean, Macarthur]).
Of the responses which indicated that the Master and Doctoral research programs offered in
the areas of creative and media arts were research degrees, it was not always clear that there
were formal structures subtending the presentation of a thesis comprised of a written and
creative/production component.

Still, responses to the Curtin survey were extensive enough to show that across Australia in
the early 1990s universities were responding to the need to develop research-education
programs in the areas of the creative and performing arts, as well as in prroduction-based
areas. So, for eaxample, in the Campus Weekly of 7 May 1992 Peter Lavery announced that
Queensland University of Technology intended to introduce a doctorate in the creative arts
in 1994, noting that "while Wollongong and James Cook already offer fine arts doctorates,
QUT's will be a first for Australia because it will be advanced artistic work in a university
setting at doctoral level."

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (15 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

Further, the survey indicated that the approaches taken by universities varied greatly. Some
universities appear to have used old structures to do new research, that is, simply to have
embraced alternate thesis forms under established rubrics (with various degrees of clarity).
Others appear to have established Postgraduate and Master (coursework) programs to carry
the burden of a new demand. Still others, like Curtin, sought to establish new research
programs that formalised the nature of creative-arts and media-production education when
conducted as research education at tertiary level. Return to paper.

3. The critical revision of Curtin's Regulations for Higher Degree by Research (at both
Master's and Doctoral levels) entailed the inclusion of a provision enabling a thesis that
could take the form of an "exegesis" and a creative- or production-based piece. Dr Barney
Glover, Director of Curtin University Office of Research and Development, was pivotal in
this development. His recollection in regard to the term "exegesis" (and its problematic
implications) is that: "Exegesis was coined by Ray Over when he was PVC(R) at Ballarat
and I was Director, R&GS - I appreciate the Biblical context but Ray believed it provided a
contrast to Thesis (it means, as you know, a critical exposition or summary, especially of
scripture) and partly implies something of a lesser length while remaining critically based. I
simply took this with me from Ballarat to Curtin in 97/98 when we revised the
regulations." (personal communication, 2 April 2003). Return to paper.

4. Indeed, at Curtin University the concept of the "exegesis" in five short years has
expanded to embrace a range of non-traditional forms of thesis - for example, to encompass
provision of an explanatory framework for previously published papers. This development
makes it more difficult to "illuminate the exegesis" - and more iperative that academics/
practitioners in the reative and media arts work out a shared (flexible) understanding of its
nature, function and value as it relates to creative and media arts theses in contemporary
Australia. Return to paper.

References

Dawson, Paul. "Creative Writing as Research." Graduate News. University of Melbourne.

February 1999. http://www.unimelb.edu.au/research/sgs/gradnews/0199/10.html.
Dibble, Brian, and Julienne van Loon. "Literary Theory and/or Writing Theory." TEXT, Vol
4, No 1 (April 2000).
Goyder, Julie. We'll Be Married in Fremantle. Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre
Press, 2001. Return to paper.
Hockey, John. "Practice-Based Research Degree Students in Art and Design: Identity and
Adaptation." Journal of Art and Design Education 22.1 (2003): 82-91.
Mann, Alan and Julie Fletcher. "Illuminating the Exegesis: a discussion of the exegesis
component of the creative thesis in Australian research higher degrees" unpublished ms
[now published - see Introduction to TEXT Special Issue No 3]. Return to paper.
Paperstergiadis, Nikos. "Everything that Surrounds: theories of the everyday, art and
politics." Third Text 57 (Winter 2001): 71-86. Return to paper.
Practice as Research in Performance. Project dir., Professor Baz Kershaw. http://www.bris.

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (16 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM

Barbara Milech & Ann Schilo TEXT Special Issue No 3

ac.uk/parip/faq.htm Return to paper.

Stewart, Robyn. "Practice vs Praxis: Constructing Models for Practitioner-Based Research."
TEXT Vol 5 No 2 (Oct 2001). Return to paper.
United Kingdom Council for Graduate Education. Research Training in the Creative and
Performing Arts and Design. n.p.: UK Council for Graduate Education, 2001.

Barbara Milech is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Media, Society and

Culture and Director of Graduate Studies in the Division of Humanities at
Curtin University. She has supervised a number of Honours, doctoral,
Masters (research) and Masters of Creative Arts students in the areas of
narrative, gender studies and cultural studies. Many of these students have
completed theses entailing exegeses or the incorporation of creative writing
strategies into traditional theses structures.

Ann Schilo is senior lecturer in the Department of Art in the Faculty of Built
Environment, Art and Design at Curtin University. She has been the co-
ordinator of postgraduate studies in the former School of Art and has
supervised a number of Masters of Creative Arts and Doctoral research
students in the field of contemporary visual arts/culture.

Back to Contents

TEXT Special Issue

No 3 April 2004
http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/text/
Editors: Julie Fletcher & Allan Mann
General Editors: Nigel Krauth & Tess Brady
Text@griffith.edu.au

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/milechschilo.htm (17 of 17)19/08/2009 2:00:08 PM